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>I'm also dependent on a bunch of advanced libraries and compilers I didn't write.

Two different kinds of dependence here: one is taking advantage of a pre-existing tool to perform some set of tasks. The other is there to outsource your thinking over concepts you are not able to reason about yourself.

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I'm also outsourcing computational geometry to CGAL and CPU optimizations to GCC, so what? I can still reason about them.

For example for a problem I had recently Claude pointed out (after some prodding for me) that the determinant of the Jacobian of a function I'm interested in is a polynomial in polar coordinates, so I used a fancy root finding library (which I also didn't write) to solve it efficiently.

Sorry, I just don't think you'd be qualified for the job if this was 5 years ago.

I had the same job 5 years ago, but I'm sure you know better.

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